Brazil’s state development bank (“BNDES”) has frozen loan disbursements for Cuba’s Mariel port and “special economic development zone” (“SEDZ”), as part of a major corruption investigation.

As we all know, the Mariel port and SEDZ project was built pursuant to a shady deal between Cuban dictator Raul Castro and former Brazilian president Lula da Silva.

Pursuant to the deal, Brazilian engineering firm Odebrecht would receive nearly $800 million in financing from BNDES, in partnership with a shadow company of the Cuban military called Almacenes Universales, S.A.

This past Monday, Brazilian prosecutors charged Lula da Silva; Odebrecht CEO Marcelo Odebrecht, who is already serving a 19-year sentence for separate corruption charges; and nine others over allegations that Lula secured BNDES funding for Odebrecht projects in Angola. In return, prosecutors said, Odebrecht bribed Lula and some people close to him.

Have no doubt, Cuba’s Mariel project will be next.

Go to the link for more, as CHP has been following this story for years.

A judge in Brasília would have to accept the charges for Mr. da Silva to face trial. He is already a defendant in two other federal cases on charges of attempted obstruction of justice, corruption and money laundering in connection with a sprawling embezzlement scheme at the state-run oil company Petróleo Brasileiro SA, known as Petrobras.

Prosecutors on Monday said Mr. da Silva arranged loans from the country’s development bank, known as BNDES, to help Odebrecht SA win public works projects in the African nation of Angola. In return, Odebrecht allegedly paid bribes of more than 30 million reais ($9.3 million), funneled mostly through a firm owned by Mr. da Silva’s nephew, Taiguara Rodrigues dos Santos, according to documents released Monday by prosecutors.

For decades the Left has maintained that Lula, while heading one of the most corrupt countries in the world, was not personally corrupt, yet another lie.

Brazilian voters punished the leftist Workers’ Party that ran the country for the past 13 years in nationwide local elections on Sunday, giving a boost to non-establishment candidates and small parties in a sign of widespread disgust with their established leaders.

The Workers’ Party, or PT, which until recently was a leading force for Latin America’s left, won 263 mayorships in Brazil, less than half the city halls it won in 2012, according to newspaper Folha de S. Paulo.

Punished, you say?

Nationwide, the PT received just 6.8 million of the 118.8 million ballots cast on Sunday, according to local paper Folha de S. Paulo, a fifth-place showing that signals a tough road for the party to regain the presidency in 2018.

Punished indeed.

Who came out on top? Doria in Sao Paulo,

The winner in São Paulo was João Doria, from the center-right Brazilian Social-Democracy Party, or PSDB, a historic rival to the PT. Mr. Doria got 53.29% of the vote, an unprecedented result that eliminates the need of a second round.

Many Brazilian local governments were put under fiscal stress when state and federal cash transfers to cities began to decline during the previous term (2012-2016). The new mayors will additionally face funding a greater share of hospitals and police forces.

The latest revelations about the Cold War-era case come on the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Orlando Letelier, a leading opponent of the Pinochet regime and onetime Chilean foreign minister, and his think-tank colleague, Ronni Moffitt, in a car bomb on D.C.’s Embassy Row.

NICARAGUANicaragua rejects U.S. bill for loans with strings attached (emphasis added)The Nicaraguan government was responding to the Nicaraguan Investment Conditionality Act, a bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday. A version was introduced by Senator Ted Cruz in the U.S. Senate earlier this month.

Nicaragua on Thursday criticized a proposal by U.S. lawmakers that would require the Central American country, which will hold elections in November, to make political changes in order to receive international loans.
. . .
The Nicaraguan government was responding to the Nicaraguan Investment Conditionality Act, a bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday. A version was introduced by Senator Ted Cruz in the U.S. Senate earlier this month.

The bill proposes blocking Nicaragua from obtaining loans from international financial institutions unless the country “is taking effective steps to hold free, fair, and transparent elections.”

On Nov. 6, Nicaraguans will vote for president and 90 members of the National Assembly.

President Daniel Ortega is the favorite as he seeks his third consecutive term.

Budgets have been roughly in balance and public debt is low. The central bank aims for an inflation rate of 4.5% and usually gets close. Commercial banks are healthy (in part because they charge high interest rates and face little competition). Regulation, like the tax code, is business-friendly. Independent trade unions, suppressed under Stroessner, are weak.

“The Uruguayan government is doing everything possible,” Vazquez said. “But as I’ve said in the past: If the countries where the Syrian citizen wants to go don’t take him, we can’t do anything about it.”

Brazil will continue a program called Mais Médicos, or More Doctors, to address a chronic lack of physicians that has mainly affected remote rural areas, the country’s health ministry said. But the government hopes to attract more Brazilian doctors to the program, to replace the foreign professionals.

The program was started by former President Dilma Rousseff, whose leftist Workers’ Party has historic ties with Cuban leaders. At the time it was created, the initiative generated huge controversy among Brazilian medical associations, which claimed the foreign doctors weren’t well prepared and had poor skills, putting Brazilians’ health at risk.

Either way, the country faces a chronic shortage of qualified medical personnel.

saying criminal charges leveled against him are aimed at reversing gains made by working people under 13 years of rule by his leftist Workers’ Party.
. . .
Authorities said Mr. da Silva directed a “criminal orchestra” that skimmed $6.2 billion reais ($1.9 billion) from inflated contracts at Petróleo Brasileiro SA, funneling the money to the Workers’ Party and its allies to personally enrich themselves and to sway votes in Congress to keep a lock on power.

Considering the amounts of money involved, the sheer volume of the corruption, and the length of time it lasted, it is amazing that Lula’s prosecution got this far. Lula’s probably the most amazed of all.

Meanwhile, here in the USA,

Last night I was waiting for the Ray Donovan season finale when I came across The Circus, Showtime’s political “reporter” (read: Dem idolatry) show, where Bill Clinton promised that “making America great again” meant going back to what Arkansas was like in his benighted “white male” childhood. The Washington Times reports

During a campaign event Wednesday for his wife Hillary Clinton, the 42nd president said Mr. Trump’s rallying cry to “Make America Great Again” is a racist dog whistle to white Southerners.

“That message where ‘I’ll give you America great again’ is if you’re a white Southerner, you know exactly what it means, don’t you?” Mr. Clintonsaid. “What it means is ‘I’ll give you an economy you had 50 years ago, and I’ll move you back up on the social totem pole and other people down.’”

Bill, who not only used the “Make America Great Again” when convenient, who forgets it was the Dems who filibustered the Civil Rights Act, and whose Clinton Foundation only spends 5.7% of its $92million budget on grants, is probably as astounded as Lula that his wife’s presidential campaign is not looking good.

What is not surprising is that, having run out of arguments, both characters are now in panic mode.

Cunha’s overwhelming defeat – by 450 votes to 10 with nine abstentions – strips him of parliamentary immunity and may be followed by criminal charges for his involvement in thebribery and kickback scandal at state-oil company Petrobras. He has also been banned from politics for eight years, a punishment more severe than that of Rousseff, who was ejected from office but maintains her political rights.

The government will sell operating licenses for airports in the cities of Porto Alegre, Salvador, Florianopolis and Fortaleza by the first quarter of 2017. It also plans to sell rights to operate federal roads in the center-west and south regions later next year.

Center-right President Michel Temer has vowed to shift economic policy away from the interventionist policies of his predecessor, Dilma Rousseff, that marred investors’ confidence in the once-booming economy.
. . .
The program includes the concession of railway projects that have already been built as well as the long-delayed auction of rights in oil fields and hydroelectric plants in the first and second half of 2017.

The government will also privatize six power distributors owned by state-run power holding company Eletrobras in the north and northeastern regions.

Who knows? All of this may point to real change, which the country needs.

The efforts to reopen the complaint filed by late AMIA special prosecutor Alberto Nisman against former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in January last year will continue this week with a hearing at an appeals court to determine if Federal Judge Daniel Rafecas had reason to deny such a petition from the DAIA Jewish community group last month.

In parallel, Federal Judge Claudio Bonadio has been making progress in an accusation of treason against Fernández de Kirchner and former foreign minister Héctor Timerman in relation to the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Iran.

If you can’t make it to the event, you can watch it live online at www.cato.org/live and join the conversation on Twitter using #Brazillionaires. Follow @CatoEvents on Twitter to get future event updates, live streams, and videos from the Cato Institute.

Syrian native Abu Wa’el Dhiab has repeatedly said he is unhappy in Uruguay and is demanding he be allowed to leave the South American country, which took him in with five other former Guantanamo prisoners in 2014.
. . .
Although there’s nothing impeding Dhiab’s family from coming to Uruguay, the former prisoner is against it, Mirza said. “We’d have to ask ourselves why his family could not come to Uruguay when the families of other Guantanamo refugees came here when they wished.”
. . .
Dhiab also says that he feels like a prisoner in Uruguay.